Tag: Care

  • Homeless kids get special treatment at Boston-area child care center

    Homeless kids get special treatment at Boston-area child care center

    by Jackie Mader, The Hechinger Report
    January 21, 2026

    To an untrained eye, the “gross motor room” at the Edgerley Family Horizons Center in Boston looks like any other indoor gym for preschoolers. There are mats on the floor, large foam blocks, shapes and stairs to play with and climb on, fabric swings hanging from the ceiling and sensory boards attached to the walls, covered with various materials that provide touch-based activities. 

    But this room was thoughtfully designed to be much more than a play space: It includes features meant to support emotional development and provide a calming place for children experiencing big feelings. For example, the cocoon swings provide a “hug” feeling that helps children relax. The blue lights above promote a sense of peace. And the soft foam tunnel gives children a place to hide when they need a break. The teachers are also specifically trained to foster feelings of safety and trust, and to reduce child stress. 

    At Edgerley, which is run by the nonprofit Horizons for Homeless Children and serves more than 250 children ages 2 months to 5 years old, there’s a need for this resource. All the children who are enrolled have experienced or are experiencing homelessness, which for kids, can lead to difficulty regulating emotions, ongoing health issues and developmental delays.

    Over the past few years, infant and toddler homelessness has increased in nearly every state. Nearly half a million of the country’s youngest children are living in shelters, in overcrowded homes with other families, or sleeping in temporary spaces, like cars or hotels. At the same time, fewer of these children are enrolled in early learning programs like the one at Edgerley. Such programs, with their enriching environments and stable teachers, can help buffer the effects of homelessness on young children and their growing brains. I recently traveled to Boston to learn more about the early learning program run by Horizons. My story, which also looks at what other cities and states are doing to help these families, was published last weekend with The Boston Globe. 

    This story about homeless kids was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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  • Parliament has debated a statutory duty of care again

    Parliament has debated a statutory duty of care again

    There has been a new parliamentary debate on a statutory duty of care for universities, which returned to Westminster Hall following a similar debate in 2023.

    I had trouble finding some of the background material – it’s perhaps unfortunate that the Nottingham Trent webpage that was hosting all of the outputs and guidance notionally attached to the Higher Education Student Support Champion and the Department for Education’s Higher education mental health implementation taskforce now redirects to a picture and bio of new Trent VC Dave Petley.

    It’s not at all clear why things like the guidance on Compassionate Communications or the National review of higher education student suicide deaths are, as a result, scattered across the internet, but there is almost certainly a metaphor in there somewhere.

    Uncertainty

    Opening the debate, Labour’s James Naish (Rushcliffe) argued that the current legal framework leaves “too much uncertainty for students and institutions alike”, noting a rise in students disclosing mental health conditions and confusion over what students can and can’t expect.

    The law develops only after harm has occurred through costly and traumatic litigation brought by those least able to bear that burden.

    Naish noted that a 2023 survey by the suicide prevention charity CALM found just 12 per cent of students believe their university handles mental health well, and referenced a British Medical Association survey of medical students published shortly before Christmas that called for a statutory duty, specifically citing concerns about sexism and sexual violence towards medical students.

    Contributors shared harrowing constituency cases throughout the debate. Labour’s Llinos Medi (Ynys Môn) recounted the death of Mared Foulkes, a pharmacy student who died by suicide after receiving incorrect exam results from Cardiff University. Medi described the current situation as:

    A postcode lottery in terms of quality and accessibility of mental health care.

    Labour’s Lizzi Collinge (Morecambe and Lunesdale) described how Oskar, a student at Sheffield Hallam living with a brain injury, attempted suicide but his parents were never informed despite giving explicit consent for contact. Chadwick said the university later argued that this consent applied only to physical injuries, not to an attempt to take his own life. He proposed a practical safeguard:

    Every student to nominate a trusted point of contact when they enrol, to be used in the event of a serious concern.”

    Chadwick also highlighted data from the government’s National Review of higher education student suicide deaths, noting that reports were submitted for only 62 per cent of serious incidents, families were not involved in three quarters of investigations, and in 71 per cent of reports it was unclear whether there had been senior sign-off.

    The DUP’s Jim Shannon (Strangford) highlighted that around 30 per cent of Northern Ireland students study on the UK mainland, making the issue directly pertinent to families in his constituency. He cited statistics on the prevalence of anxiety and mental health issues among young people in Northern Ireland and stressed:

    Independence is not the same as isolation.

    He called for discussions between the minister and the devolved administrations to work collectively across the United Kingdom.

    Labour’s Warinder Juss (Wolverhampton West), a former personal injury solicitor, provided legal analysis, describing it as “quite shocking” that common law does not impose a duty of care on universities when such duties exist:

    In prisons, hospitals, primary, secondary schools and colleges of further education… for doctor to patient, solicitor to client, manufacturer to consumer, and one road user to another.

    She walked through the Abrahart v University of Bristol case in detail, and noted that had a duty of care existed:

    There would have been a breach of that duty, and the university would consequently have been negligent.

    A statutory duty, she argued, would “define expectations, embed accountability and promote prevention” while bringing UK law into line with the United States and Australia. She also pushed back on the idea that relying on the Equality Act is sufficient, noting that while some cases involve a history of engagement and diagnosis:

    In many other cases, it could be something that the student suddenly finds himself in this situation.

    Students without a formal disability diagnosis would fall through the gaps.

    Labour’s Rachel Maskell (York Central) broadened the debate to include the intersection of pressures students face, and emphasised that students who struggle academically must always have “a second chance”.

    Labour’s Tom Hayes (Bournemouth East) raised implementation questions, noting that any statutory duty would need clarity on what it means in a higher education context and must intersect with existing safeguarding responsibilities, health and safety law and equality legislation. He also asked:

    Who would monitor and regulate compliance? Would it fall under Ofsted? Would it fall under the Office for Students, the DfE, or a new regulatory body?

    Labour’s Mary Kelly Foy (City of Durham) highlighted the particular vulnerability of care-experienced and estranged students, citing a Unite Foundation report that “well over a quarter” face financial concerns that “directly damage their mental health”. She noted the scale of the increase in students disclosing mental health conditions since 2011, and argued that a statutory duty need not mean in loco parentis monitoring:

    A professional standard of care providing the same level of protection that we would expect from an employer or a healthcare provider.”

    A statutory duty would also provide clarity on data sharing to empower pastoral teams to involve emergency contacts without fearing that they are breaching GDPR – an issue raised repeatedly throughout the debate as universities have used data protection as a reason not to contact families. But Foy cautioned that concerns raised by the University and College Union must be addressed:

    Simply imposing a duty of care on universities won’t work if already overstretched staff and underfunded pastoral teams are simply expected to pick up the pieces.”

    Labour’s Kerry McCarthy (Bristol East) raised the question of whether a statutory duty of care is the mechanism needed to bring smaller and less prominent higher education providers on board, or whether there might be another way to ensure consistency across the sector.

    The Liberal Democrat spokesperson argued that the voluntary university mental health charter – to which just over 100 of 165 universities have signed up – must become more than an aspiration:

    A voluntary aspiration must evolve to a rigorous accountability mechanism… with clear standards, regular independent assessment and consequences for non-compliance.

    Conservative shadow spokesperson Nick Timothy (West Suffolk) acknowledged that while their party’s position on a statutory duty is not yet fully established, “we certainly need to do a lot better than we’re doing right now.” He also bolted on a bunch of stuff about freedom of speech.

    The response

    Responding for the government, Skills Minister Josh McAlister began by acknowledging “the profound pain” felt by families who have lost loved ones and paying tribute to the Abraharts’ “tireless work” and the families from the LEARN Network “who continue to work alongside us to drive change.” He was unequivocal that change was needed:

    This government believes that change in this regard is needed.

    He then outlined recent government actions, including publication of the National Review of higher education student suicides, the extension of the Higher Education Mental Health Implementation Taskforce with updated terms of reference published in December 2025, and the appointment of Steve West to replace Edward Peck Higher Education Student Support Champion. He emphasised that the taskforce’s priorities include:

    Exploring the most effective mechanisms for holding the sector to account.

    On NHS capacity, McAlister noted the government is “recruiting eight and a half thousand additional NHS mental health staff by the end of this Parliament” and said the taskforce would shortly publish a report showcasing five successful higher education and NHS partnerships. He urged universities not already in such partnerships:

    …to study these models and explore how they can forge an approach that works for their local context.

    Perhaps inevitably, McAlister stopped short of committing to a statutory duty of care. He repeated the argument that universities already have a general duty of care under common law to deliver educational and pastoral services “to the standard of an ordinarily competent institution” and are expected to act reasonably. He also pointed to existing protections under the Equality Act 2010, which requires reasonable adjustments for disabled students including those with mental health conditions, and said:

    Where a severe or urgent condition is apparent, reasonable adjustments should be made without waiting for a formal diagnosis or medical evidence.

    On why the government was not introducing a statutory duty, McAlister raised concerns about unintended consequences:

    It is not just a question of drafting. It would require defining a minimum legal standard for universities, which risks becoming a ceiling rather than a floor.

    …and warned that a statutory duty:

    …could drive providers towards defensive compliance and litigation instead of focusing on what really matters, spotting problems early, making timely adjustments and learning from serious incidents.

    He also noted that:

    Almost all students are adults. Introducing a special statutory duty for them could be disproportionate when the evidence shows that students in higher education have a lower suicide rate than others in the same age in the general population.

    McAlister was quick to add this was “not in any way to minimise the problem at universities” but to “highlight the need for a proportionate response that strikes the right balance.”

    His conclusion offered continued engagement but no commitment to legislate:

    We will continue to monitor the evidence, listen deeply to bereaved families and hold providers to account. But right now, the fastest and most effective route to support safer campuses is for universities to embed the recommendations from the National Review and best practice identified through the task force’s outputs.

    Round in circles

    McAlister’s rejection of a statutory duty rested on three key arguments – that adequate legal protections already exist, that a statutory duty risks becoming “a ceiling rather than a floor,” and that students have a lower suicide rate than their peers in the general population. But is he right?

    McAlister’s assertion that universities already have a general duty of care under common law to deliver services “to the standard of an ordinarily competent institution” has been repeated by successive ministers since 2023, but its legal basis is questionable.

    The source has been traced to an AMOSSHE policy breakfast blog published in 2015 – since deleted from its original website. When tested in court in Abrahart v University of Bristol, the judge found no relevant common law duty existed.

    In Feder and McCamish v The Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, the court found a limited duty only because the institution failed to follow its own voluntary procedures – it explicitly did not recognise any general duty to protect student welfare.

    Freedom of Information requests seeking the legal authority for the government’s position have been refused under legal professional privilege. The government has never identified a court, judge, or case supporting its assertion. As one legal analysis noted, the government’s response “has no legal weight” – a view shared by the defendant’s own barrister in the Royal Welsh case.

    McAlister warned that a statutory duty would drive “defensive compliance and litigation” rather than genuine care. But the behaviours critics fear – defensive reliance on process, fragmentation of responsibility, procedural rigidity, retrospective rather than proactive responses – are arguably already characteristic of the current voluntary system.

    Universities operate through dense policy layers designed to manage liability rather than responsibility. The absence of clear accountability has not produced proactive care – it has produced risk management in which no one is clearly responsible when foreseeable harm occurs.

    Bob Abrahart’s analogy with seatbelt legislation is fascinating – before the law changed, critics warned compulsory seatbelts would encourage passive compliance rather than active judgment. What actually happened was that the law reset baseline expectations, and culture followed. A statutory duty would not prevent universities exceeding minimum standards – it would ensure none falls below them.

    You could make a raft of similar arguments, by the way, about harassment and sexual misconduct. But just yesterday in the House of Lords skills minister Jacqui Smith pointed to “unacceptable levels of sexual harassment and abuse of girls within our schools and universities,” and pointed to the recently introduced Office for Students regulatory requirements on harassment and sexual misconduct as steps towards creating safer campus environments and improving institutional accountability.

    Why are regulatory requirements the answer on that issue, but a danger on this?

    McAlister also noted that students have a lower suicide rate than others of the same age, suggesting a statutory duty would be “disproportionate.” But for many, the framing is misleading.

    University students are not representative of their age group – they have passed academic and financial thresholds to reach higher education, and many with acute mental health challenges never arrive or leave when unwell. A lower rate among a pre-selected, relatively advantaged population is expected – that it is not dramatically lower should concern, not reassure.

    Universities are supposed to be semi-protected environments with pastoral care, support services, and trained staff. If the benchmark is whether students are safer inside higher education than outside it, the answer is far from clear. The reality of 160 deaths per year – more than three every week – hardly supports complacency.

    Aggregate rates also conceal inequalities – male students die at more than twice the rate of female students, first-year undergraduates face significantly higher risk, and part-time students have higher rates than full-time peers.

    Wait and see

    The most prominent commitment Halfon made – that all universities would sign up to the mental health charter by September 2024 – was not achieved. Membership increased to 113 universities, covering approximately 90 per cent of students, but fell short of universal coverage.

    More significantly, sign-up does not equal meaningful engagement – as of May 2025, only 17 institutions had actually been awarded charter status, and most of those achieved only “award with conditions.” The gap between signing up and embedding its principles illustrates a recurring pattern – outputs were produced, but outcomes remain elusive.

    The National review of higher education student suicides was delivered – conducted by NCISH and published in May 2025. There is as yet no sign that engagement with its recommendations for universities will be even monitored, let alone action taken.

    The Compassionate Communication Statement that Halfon promised was published and shared with the sector by December 2024, but adoption remains voluntary. There is no requirement for universities to follow it, and no sign even of monitoring that it’s been considered let alone implemented.

    Plenty of SUs I’ve spoken to tell me that a) it’s never been considered formally inside their committee structures, and even where it has b) there’s been little on monitoring adoption across a university’s diverse departments. There has also c) been a sense in some universities that it doesn’t apply in some scenarios – like when a student is accused of an assessment offence, or being chased for tuition fee payments.

    A Competency framework for non-specialist staff was published in February 2025, but it too is merely “advisory” – taskforce members raised concerns that because training is not mandatory, many staff groups may simply “opt out.”

    Other commitments have stalled or failed entirely. Information sharing between schools and universities to identify at-risk students before arrival remains, in the taskforce’s own words, “a complex and time-consuming task.” UCAS has expressed “limited appetite” for changes to the reference process, and proposed “wellbeing passports” face significant cost and viability barriers.

    Student analytics and early warning systems have not been rolled out – taskforce minutes show “major obstacles remain” and many providers feel they are “too far away” from implementation.

    Guidance on restricting access to means of suicide was published in September 2024, but the national review found this was “rarely addressed” in university incident reports, with only one out of eight relevant reports recommending any action.

    There’s also lots in the minutes on whether, how, if and so on there should be engagement with or compliance from FE providers, small and specialist, franchised and so on. Years abroad, placements and so on, not to much.

    Crucially, the regulatory threat that underpinned Halfon’s approach has not materialised. He warned that if the sector response was unsatisfactory, he would ask the Office for Students to introduce a new registration condition on mental health. How would DfE even know?

    What could be done?

    As to how any duty might actually work, it’s not as if there aren’t some interesting examples that deserve further interrogation.

    Sweden treats students as equivalent to employees for the purposes of workplace safety law. The Work Environment Act 1977 explicitly extends its protections to “persons undergoing education or training,” so university students are covered by the same statutory framework that protects workers.

    The Higher Education Ordinance then reinforces this by requiring institutions to provide students with access to healthcare – “particularly preventive healthcare that aims to support students’ physical and mental health” – and a “good environment in which to study.”

    What makes the Swedish system particularly robust is its enforcement through student representation. Student unions appoint studerandeskyddsombud (student safety representatives) who have formal statutory rights to participate in work environment activities.

    These reps sit on safety committees alongside staff, participate in inspections of teaching premises, and can raise concerns about both physical and psychosocial study environments directly with university leadership. Universities have to provide training on work environment legislation, and the Swedish Work Environment Authority supervises compliance and can intervene against institutions.

    Responsibility for the work environment lies with the institution and ultimately with the management – but students have formal standing to identify problems and demand action.

    Meanwhile Australia embeds student wellbeing within a regulatory framework with real consequences. Domain 2 of the Higher Education Standards Framework includes a dedicated section on “Wellbeing and Safety,” requiring providers to promote a safe environment, provide timely advice on support services, and ensure services reflect student needs including mental health and wellbeing.

    The Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Agency (TEQSA) has statutory powers to register providers, assess compliance, and take enforcement action. All providers must be registered, and registration must be renewed at least every seven years. Meeting wellbeing and safety standards is not optional – it is a condition of being permitted to operate.

    Both models offer lessons. Sweden demonstrates that students can be brought within existing workplace safety legislation without creating unworkable burdens – the framework already exists for employees, and extending it to students is a matter of legal definition. Australia demonstrates that wellbeing requirements can be embedded in registration conditions enforced by an education regulator with powers to sanction non-compliance.

    England already has the Office for Students as a sector regulator with power to impose registration conditions. The question ministers have repeatedly declined to answer is why wellbeing and safety in the learning environment should not be among them.

    Both Sweden and Australia show this is not novel or untested – it is just how other comparable jurisdictions protect their students. Surely a Tertiary Professional Standard can’t be beyond the sector to meet?

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  • Breaking barriers: what the data tells us about care experienced and estranged applicants

    Breaking barriers: what the data tells us about care experienced and estranged applicants

    Over the weekend, HEPI published blogs considering whether we are fixing or unmaking universities, and asking why there haven’t been more institution mergers.

    This blog was kindly authored by Fiona Ellison, Co-Director, Unite Foundation.

    It is the fourth blog in HEPI’s series with The Unite Foundation on how to best support care experienced and estranged students. You can find the first blog here, the second here, and the third here.

    Higher education is often described as a transformative experience, but for some students the journey begins with significant barriers. Care experienced and estranged applicants – those who have spent time in care or are studying without family support – face unique challenges that impact their access, retention and success. At the Unite Foundation, we believe that the first step toward creating a more inclusive sector is to understand the data that underpins these challenges. We are grateful to do this in partnership with our long-term donor – Unite Students.

    In 2022, Unite Students first undertook their annual applicant index, which sheds light on the experiences of students starting university for the first time. This year, we’ve been able to compare the experiences of ‘traditional’ students with those who identify as either care experienced or estranged. The findings reveal stark differences in financial pressures, mental health, social connection and academic engagement.

    Who are we talking about?

    Across two years of survey data, 370 respondents identified as care experienced or estranged, compared to 2,981 who did not. These students are not a homogenous group, but patterns emerge: they also reflect a diverse demographic profile. For example, 17.8% of care experienced and estranged applicants identified as transgender, compared to just 2.3% of other applicants. Similarly, 3.8% identified as non-binary (vs 1.6%). These figures highlight the intersectionality of working with this group of students – we know that if you can get it right for care experienced and estranged students you can get it right for all students.

    The impact of financial pressure on mental health

    Financial insecurity is a recurring theme. Over a quarter (27.3%) of care experienced and estranged applicants reported that financial issues affect their mental health, compared to 19.6% of their peers. This is not surprising. Without family support, these students often navigate university life without the safety net others take for granted. We know from HEPI, TechnologyOne and Loughborough University’s Minimum Income Standard for Students that those studying without financial support – e.g. care experienced & estranged students – even with the full maintenance loan, would still need to work over 20 hours at minimum wage to achieve the minimum income standard needed to survive at university.  

    The implications are clear. Financial stress compounds mental health challenges, which in turn affect academic performance and retention. This was clear from the analysis we did of the Student Academic Experience Survey, which found that 43% of care experienced students and 44% of estranged students have considered withdrawing from university, compared to 28% of their peers. 

    Whilst the survey doesn’t give us insight into the reasons why, it does provide clues. For example, care-experienced students and estranged students work significantly more hours in paid employment, with care experienced students working, on average, 11.3 hours/week, and estranged students working 11.1 hours/week, compared to 8.8 hours/week for other students. 

    Social isolation and belonging

    University is often marketed as a time of social connection, but for many care experienced and estranged students, isolation is the norm. Only 26.8% said they have someone to turn to in a crisis, compared to 42.3% of other applicants. More than one in five (21.8%) expressed little interest in the social side of university life, almost double the proportion of their peers (11.2%).

    Pleasingly, expectations of belonging are similar across groups. 53.2% of care experienced and estranged applicants expected to feel a sense of belonging at university, compared to 54.8% of others. We know through our work supporting the All of Us Community – a space for all care experienced and estranged students to come together and connect with their peers – that creating opportunities for connection to help build that sense of belonging is crucial which is why we offer our ‘Funding for Fun’ small grants pot to facilitate connection between students online and in person across institutions.

    Learning challenges and attendance

    Academic engagement is another area of concern. Care experienced and estranged applicants are twice as likely to have prolonged absences due to mental health:

    • 22.9% missed 5–20 days in the past two years (vs 11.0% of non-care experienced students)
    • 21.9% missed more than 20 days (vs 10.1% of non-care experienced students).

    They are also more likely to struggle to keep up with their course (27.3% vs 18.8%). We know that this group of students are more likely to be working additional hours to fund their studies and this takes a toll on their ability to commit time to studies.

    That’s why, for students who received the Unite Foundation scholarship, we see their progression rates from year 1-2 at the same rate as non-care experienced peers and they graduate at a rate much closer to their non-care experienced peers. They’re not having to work as many hours as their peers, as they have a safe space to live with their rent covered for 365 days a year, for up to 3 years.

    This requirement to work to fund their studies shows up in the data – a striking 38.7% of care experienced and estranged applicants report significant work experience, compared to 27% of their peers.

    What does this all mean?

    The data tells a clear story: care experienced and estranged students face systemic barriers that cannot be solved by goodwill alone. Financial support, mental health provision and inclusive community-building must be embedded in institutional strategies.

    For policymakers, this means recognising these students as a priority group in widening participation agendas – not just paying lip service, but embedding and regulating for action. For universities, it means moving beyond access to focus on retention and success – using evidence based solutions, such as the Unite Foundation scholarship to create the conditions to enable care experienced and estranged students to thrive.

    If you want to explore how action to address accommodation issues can better support you care experienced and estranged students the Unite Foundation Blueprint framework can support your institution in building a safe and stable home for students, improving retention and attainment outcomes.  

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  • Proposed Changes to Provider Pay Could Lead to Child Care Rate Hikes, Closures – The 74

    Proposed Changes to Provider Pay Could Lead to Child Care Rate Hikes, Closures – The 74


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    For months now, Shannon Hampson has had August 1 etched in her mind. 

    That day marks an important shift for her and other early care and education providers in Nebraska who serve low-income families. On that date, the state intended to begin paying providers a consistent rate for families who use government subsidies to pay for child care. 

    Instead of reimbursing providers based on children’s attendance — which can vary wildly, especially this time of year, based on factors like illness and family travel — Nebraska would pay providers the same amount each month based on enrollment. 

    Last year, because of the change expected to come in summer 2026, Hampson, who owns a home-based child care program in Lincoln, Nebraska, felt comfortable filling more of her program slots with children whose families pay with subsidies. Today, she does not have one private-paying family. She made the shift assuming the enrollment-based pay would insulate her from the instability that often accompanies subsidy slots. 

    “I was super excited to know more of these families were going to get that quality, consistent care,” Hampson said, adding that reaching more low-income families is important in the field. “It’s not that providers don’t want to.”

    Now, though, that could all be about to change. 

    Nebraska’s transition to enrollment-based pay was part of an effort to get in compliance with a rule established by the Biden administration in 2024. Enrollment-based payments, that administration believed, would create greater predictability for providers, allowing them to serve more low-income families who need child care and, eventually, could entice more providers to participate in the subsidy program. 

    The rule was one of a handful of changes made by the prior administration related to the Child Care and Development Fund (CCDF), the primary federal program that states use to provide financial assistance to low-income families in need of child care. Other shifts include paying providers up front for child care, rather than reimbursing them the following month, and encouraging the use of grants and contracts with providers. State timelines for implementing these changes have varied. As of September 2025, 24 states were paying based on enrollment, according to an analysis by New America. For the others, the latest deadline granted was Aug. 1, 2026. 

    Just this week, however, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through the Administration for Children and Families (ACF), announced that it would seek to rescind many of the 2024 rules, returning these issues to states. 

    The proposed changes cannot be enforced right away. Under federal law, the agency is required to take public comments, review them, and use that input to make final decisions, noted Alex Adams, who leads ACF. He declined to give a timeline for any changes to take effect.

    If approved, the changes would not “make any net new policy decisions,” he added. “It simply goes back to where we were prior to 2024 regulations.”

    The administration wants to rescind the 2024 rules, he said, because all 50 states had requested waivers related to some or all of these rules due to budget constraints and other implementation challenges. 

    “Any time 50 states are asking for a waiver from something,” Adams said, “it suggests to me that maybe the rule isn’t working as intended.”

    He also noted that “attendance-verified payment,” rather than enrollment-based, “is more of a deterrent to fraud.” Leaders in the Trump administration are concerned about programs with “phantom attendance” — suggesting they receive government payments but don’t actually serve the children they say they do — Adams said, but he declined to share specifics of ongoing investigations. 

    Many early care and education advocates and policy experts have expressed skepticism that rampant fraud and abuse is going unchecked. 

    Casey Peeks, senior director of early childhood policy at the Center for American Progress, a left-leaning think tank, called the allegations “unfounded” and worried that they would undo real progress made in the field in recent years. 

    “It is very unhelpful and destabilizing to the sector, in the immediate- and long-term, to take some of these most foundational levers we have to stabilize the sector and claim that they result in fraud,” Peeks said.

    Upon hearing the news this week, Hampson said she’s had to remind herself to “just breathe.” She knew she was taking a risk by enrolling 100% of families on subsidies.

    Now, she said, she will have to rearrange her budget to continue to serve all of those families. Under an attendance-based pay structure, her income is just that much more volatile.

    In December, for example, between holidays, vacation time and children’s absences, Hampson was only able to bill the state for 18 child care days. If the children in her program were from private-paying families, she would have been paid for 23 days, she said. 

    But Hampson’s operational costs didn’t see a material decrease in December. 

    “Without a provider being at fault at all, they could be at 50% attendance one day just because the flu is going around. That shouldn’t harm their bottom line,” Peeks said. 

    “It’s really unpredictable and unfair for the provider,” she added. “Just because attendance is down doesn’t mean operation costs go down.”

    In West Virginia, where providers have been paid based on enrollment since 2020, Katelyn Vandal emphasized how critical the change has been to keeping her rural, center-based program open. 

    “Our mortgage payment doesn’t cost less because two kids in the classroom have the flu,” noted Vandal, director of A Place to Grow, a child care center in Oak Hill, West Virginia. Nor does her electricity bill and a host of other overhead costs. 

    If her state returns to attendance-based pay, she’s not sure A Place to Grow would be able to continue operating. The center serves about 100 kids, with 60% from families that pay with subsidies. 

    “We run such a fine budget line anyway that if, six months from now, we were going back to attendance, we would be looking at closing,” she said. “We would not survive transitioning back to that.”

    Sheryl Hutzenbiler, owner of Munchkin Land Daycare in Billings, Montana, said she suspects that, under attendance-based pay, providers will either raise tuition rates on families — many of whom are already paying the maximum they can afford without one parent leaving the workforce — or, like Vandal, be forced to close their doors. 

    But that is not a decision Hutzenbiler will have to face, should the Trump administration successfully restore attendance-based pay. Since she lives in Montana, where enrollment-based pay became law in 2023, she and other providers in the state are protected from policy fluctuations at the federal level. 

    That’s true for a handful of states, which have either passed laws protecting enrollment-based pay or have continued paying based on enrollment, on a temporary basis, since the pandemic. (West Virginia is in the latter category.)

    Enrollment-based pay has been pivotal for Hutzenbiler, whose home-based program consists of about 60% of families who pay with subsidies. Back when she was paid based on attendance, she said her first sacrifice during low-attendance months would be her own wages. She would pay her full-time teacher first and make sure program costs were covered, often leaving nothing for herself and relying on her husband’s income instead. With the consistent subsidy income each month, though, she’s not only been able to avoid missed paychecks for herself, she’s been able to add two part-time workers to the payroll. 

    Hampson, in Nebraska, said she was part of a group last year advocating for the state to pass legislation around enrollment-based pay. It was ultimately unsuccessful.

    “We wanted to know our state had already said yes, so we wouldn’t go backwards,” she said. “And here we are going backwards.”

    In an industry where profit margins are estimated at less than 1%, these changes will inevitably leave providers who participate in the subsidy program with less revenue to survive on. The shifts will likely also deter providers who participate in the subsidy program, or who might have considered participating, from doing so in the future, said Peeks. This will likely, in effect, leave low-income families with fewer choices about where to go for child care. 

    “When you’re stabilizing providers overall, you’re often creating more options for families overall,” said Peeks. “I think it could definitely have a chilling effect.”


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  • Child Care Aid Could Run Out by Jan. 31 Due to Trump Funding Freeze, Colorado Officials Say – The 74

    Child Care Aid Could Run Out by Jan. 31 Due to Trump Funding Freeze, Colorado Officials Say – The 74


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    Colorado officials say money that helps 18,000 low-income families pay for child care could run out by Jan. 31 if federal officials don’t lift the freeze they’ve imposed on funding for several safety net programs in five Democrat-led states.

    If that happens, some children could go without care and some parents would have to stay home from work. State lawmakers could cover such a funding gap temporarily, though Colorado is facing a significant budget crunch.

    The Trump administration announced the freeze on $10 billion in child care and social services funding for Colorado, California, Illinois, Minnesota, and New York in a press release Monday.

    In letters sent to the two Colorado agencies that run the affected programs, federal officials said they have “reason to believe that the State of Colorado is illicitly providing” benefits funded with federal dollars to “illegal aliens.”

    The letters didn’t cite evidence for that claim and a spokesperson for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services didn’t respond to questions from Chalkbeat about why federal officials are concerned about fraud in Colorado.

    Spokespeople from both state departments said by email on Tuesday they’re not aware of any federal fraud investigations focused on the programs affected by the funding freeze.

    The five-state funding freeze follows a federal crackdown in Minnesota after a right-wing YouTuber posted a video in late December alleging that Minneapolis child care centers run by Somali residents get federal funds but serve no children. It’s not clear why the other four states have gotten the same treatment as Minnesota, but all have Democratic governors who have clashed with President Donald Trump.

    In a New Year’s Eve social media post, Trump called Colorado Gov. Jared Polis “the Scumbag Governor” and said Polis and another Colorado official should “rot in hell” for mistreating Tina Peters, a Trump supporter and former Mesa County clerk who’s serving a nine-year prison sentence for orchestrating a plot to breach election systems.

    The federal freeze will affect three main funding streams in Colorado that together bring in about $317 million a year. They include $138 million for the Colorado Department of Early Childhood for child care subsidies for low-income families and a few other programs.

    The subsidy program, known as the Colorado Child Care Assistance program, helps cover the cost of care for more than 27,000 children so parents can work or take classes. It’s mostly funded by the federal government with smaller contributions from states and counties.

    The other two frozen funding streams go to the Colorado Department of Human Services and pay for Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, or TANF, and other programs.

    In the letter to the Colorado Department of Early Childhood, federal officials outlined new fiscal requirements the state will have to follow before the funding freeze is lifted. They include attendance documentation — without names or other personal identifiers — for children in the child care subsidy program.

    A state fact sheet issued in response to the funding freeze said funding for the child care subsidy program would be depleted by Jan. 31. It also outlined several measures already in place to prevent fraud or waste, including state audits, monthly case reviews by county officials, and efforts to recover funds if improper payments are made.

    The state said it is exploring “all options, including legal avenues” to keep the frozen funding flowing.

    Six Democratic state lawmakers, most in leadership positions, released a statement Tuesday afternoon calling the funding freeze a callous move that will make life more expensive for working families.

    “We stand ready to work with Governor Polis and partners in our federal delegation to resist this lawless effort to freeze funding, and we sincerely hope that our Republican colleagues will put politics aside, get serious about making life in Colorado more affordable, and put families first,” the statement said in part.

    The statement was from Speaker of the House Julie McCluskie; Senate President James Coleman; House Majority Leader Monica Duran; Senate Majority Leader Robert Rodriguez; Rep. Emily Sirota; and Sen. Judy Amabile.

    Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.


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  • Early childhood educator apprenticeships offer an answer to child care shortages

    Early childhood educator apprenticeships offer an answer to child care shortages

    by Nirvi Shah, The Hechinger Report
    January 7, 2026

    About six years ago, an apprentice training to be a machinist in Washington state told her supervisor she would probably have to drop out of the training program after having her baby: She couldn’t find child care that accommodated her shift.

    It was one of the first challenges Shana Peschek was tasked with solving when she became executive director of the Machinists Institute, which trains workers for jobs in the aerospace, manufacturing and automotive industries all over the state. 

    Peschek knew it was essential to do something for workers with young children.

    “That worst shift, the new hires are going to get it. The new hires are generally younger people. They have little kids or they are going to want a little kid,” Peschek said.

    “It’s beyond the cost of child care,” she said. “If they can’t find anywhere, we’re going to lose them.” 

    As Peschek worked on a way to address the situation, she also wondered how she could include apprenticeship in the solution. The answer: incorporating early educator apprenticeships into a custom-built child care center tailored to the trade union’s needs. Last month, The Hechinger Report wrote about San Francisco’s child care apprenticeship program. 

    “Apprenticeship is my jam,” said Peschek, who emphasized that apprenticeship is a mode of education, not limited to any specific profession. While the word apprentice is often associated with roles like machinists, it is just the term for an educational path that includes paid, on-the-job training. Early educator apprenticeships do just that, providing classes and training alongside paid work experience to help hopeful teachers earn required credentials and get full-time jobs. “I want that pathway available for our teachers and assistant teachers,” she said.

    With a combination of institute money, grants and donations, the Machinists Institute bought land and is constructing Little Wings Early Learning Academy in Everett, Washington. Its name is inspired by the local economy, which is powered in part by a nearby Boeing factory. The center will serve workers in the trade union, who will be able to send their young children for care starting as early as 4 a.m. through as late as midnight. Care will also be available on weekends, to accommodate a range of shifts. It is scheduled to open this spring.

    Machinists, maritime industry workers and other local tradespeople and apprentices will pay a discounted rate for child care, which will also be available to area residents to enroll their kids. 

    Peschek’s hopes are high, for all of the apprentices the center will involve. 

    That’s in part because of the experience some early educator apprentices have had. Apprenticeships have been a part of the trades for centuries, but they are relatively novel in education. 

    The option changed the course of Carlota Hernández de Cruz’s life. For years, with only an elementary school education from when she grew up in Mexico, she was the primary caregiver for her three children while her husband was the breadwinner. When her youngest child was still in child care, at a California Head Start program run by an area YMCA, she began working a few hours a day as a parent intern at the center. 

    She eventually encountered Pamm Shaw, who created one of the first early educator apprenticeship programs in the country for the YMCA of the East Bay, in California’s Alameda County. Shaw encouraged Hernández de Cruz to take classes and work toward becoming an early childhood teacher. 

    “I’m originally from Mexico,” Hernández de Cruz said, remembering her apprehension. “I came with zero English.” But Shaw was convincing. 

    Hernández de Cruz took classes, one or two at a time, balancing them with motherhood and homekeeping duties. Then her husband got sick and could no longer work. It took years, but she completed the courses for her associate degree. Just a few months before graduation, her husband died. 

    Hernández de Cruz, now 53, knew that although what she had accomplished was monumental, it wasn’t enough. Thanks to her apprenticeship, however, her bachelor’s degree coursework was paid for, even though it was sometimes a struggle to keep up with the requirements of online courses and lectures in English, while solo parenting and working. 

    In 2019, Hernández de Cruz earned that bachelor’s degree but turned down a job running a child care center. She wasn’t ready. When she was approached again in 2021 about a director role, at the center where she was working, she agreed. There have been ups and downs: That center closed and she was back to teaching for a while. But now she runs the Vera Casey Center, a Head Start site for infants and toddlers in Berkeley that is part of the YMCA of the East Bay.

    “I feel I can say financially I’m stable,” Hernández de Cruz said, and she said she is proud of herself and her children. Her kids grew up watching their mother work and study hard and have had opportunities she didn’t when she was younger, even though she said they all faltered, and flunked a few classes, when their father died. Her younger daughter just graduated from a nursing program and her older daughter completed a bachelor’s degree in child development and is now pursuing a master’s degree. Both daughters live at home with her, as do her parents. (Her son, she said, is still taking classes and finding his way.) “I’m stable but he’s not here with us,” Hernández de Cruz said of her husband, but “being in the classroom with kids, it helped me to heal. That’s what I feel at work. I still feel happy every day.”

    Contact Executive Editor Nirvi Shah at 212-678-3445, on Signal at NirviShah.14 or [email protected]. 

    Reporting on this story was supported by the Higher Ed Media Fellowship.

    This story about child care apprenticeships was produced by The Hechinger Report, a nonprofit, independent news organization focused on inequality and innovation in education. Sign up for the Hechinger newsletter.

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  • How One Calif. College Helped Rebuild Child Care After the Eaton Fire

    How One Calif. College Helped Rebuild Child Care After the Eaton Fire

    Last January, Alana Lewis felt an all-too-familiar dread as the Santa Ana winds tore through the tents above the playground at her home-based day care.

    Little did she know, those winds weren’t just a harbinger of fire—they marked the beginning of a crisis that would leave lasting scars on her Altadena community.

    She watched in disbelief as the Eaton Fire raged through California’s San Gabriel Mountains, creeping close to the outdoor slide and toys in her yard, which she would later find melted into the artificial grass.

    As fire sirens blared and acrid smoke filled her home, Lewis evacuated, helplessly watching nearby homes and child-care sites like hers go up in flames.

    “I hate that it happened, but I thank God that it wasn’t in the daytime,” said Lewis, founder of Auntie Lana’s Daycare. “I thank God that when the fire did hit, it was at night when the children were already home safe.”

    Today, on the one-year anniversary of the blaze, it’s clear the fire wasn’t just an environmental disaster; it upended the everyday rhythms of life for Lewis and many other child-care providers across Los Angeles.

    Nearly 60 percent of licensed child-care sites in Altadena were damaged or destroyed, according to data from the Pasadena Community Foundation.

    “Everything outside was completely destroyed, demolished and unrecognizable,” said Lewis, adding that the condition inside her home was no better. “The soot from the fire was so thick that when you walked on the carpet, it would get underneath and inside your tennis shoes.”

    Lewis spent months living in hotels and with family as she repaired her home, discarding furniture and salvaging what little remained from a shed that once housed art materials, bikes, toys and other equipment for her day-care charges.

    Although initial emergency subsidies helped Lewis and other child-care providers for 30 days after the fire, she says she felt abandoned and neglected as she continued to face mounting out-of-pocket costs.

    Relief came when Lewis received a $45,000 grant from Pacific Oaks College, allowing her to reopen her day care in early July.

    The Pasadena-based college, in partnership with the Pasadena Community Foundation and Save the Children, distributed about $2 million to 43 child-care sites affected by the Eaton Fire. Grants ranged from $900 to $45,000, helping providers like Lewis rebuild and continue serving families.

    “It helped a lot of providers who were stressed out,” Lewis said, noting that the loss of income prevented many from paying rent and that some were denied small business loans.

    Breeda McGrath, president of Pacific Oaks College, said she recognized early on that child-care providers were suffering and mobilized to find donors.

    McGrath said the decision to support them came naturally, given the college’s roots as a preschool in the 1940s and its evolution by the late 1950s into a four-year institution known for its work in early childhood education and teacher training.

    “The identity of Pacific Oaks College over the years … has been focused on social justice, equity and diversity,” McGrath said. “So if we are not at the table to help rebuild and sustain early childhood education in our area, then we’re forgetting who we are.”

    She sent a formal proposal to the Pasadena Community Foundation requesting $1.3 million to help child-care providers rebuild or secure new leases, pay staff, replace lost materials, and provide tuition support for families.

    Within two days, the philanthropic organization that funds nonprofits and community initiatives in the greater Pasadena area agreed to support the effort.

    McGrath later secured an additional $800,000 from Save the Children, a nonprofit that provides health, education and emergency aid to support children’s rights and well-being.

    “This is our responsibility as a true community leader,” she said. “If we believe in teacher preparation, if we believe in supporting children, this is part of what you do.”

    Pacific Oaks Steps In: In the immediate aftermath of the fire, Pacific Oaks College served as a hub for local child-care providers seeking air purifiers, diapers and other essentials.

    McGrath said this was critical because, although the Pasadena Convention Center operated as the main coordination and distribution site, it proved difficult for some child-care providers to access the specific supplies they needed.

    Breeda McGrath (first photo, left) joins Pacific Oaks College staff and student workers in helping child-care providers stock up on critical items.

    She said Pacific Oaks College not only served as a hub, but also provided the “human power” of its staff and students—many of whom are training to become early childhood educators themselves.

    McGrath said higher education institutions play a unique role in disaster recovery, particularly in supporting and preparing the next generation of educators.

    “I believe in the long-term investment that higher education makes in a community,” McGrath said, noting that many child-care providers in the area studied at Pacific Oaks College.

    “So educating early childhood providers about the best ways to build strong community relationships, run their businesses, care for children and access opportunities for continued learning—that’s where we can contribute our knowledge,” she said.

    One year later, McGrath said long-term recovery is top of mind as the community works to rebuild its child-care system and support students training to become early childhood educators.

    “If you look at the destruction, the rebuilding process takes a lot of time, effort and energy,” McGrath said. “Not just in terms of the insurance process, but also how long it takes to decide what it means to return—or what it means not to return.”

    Auntie Lana’s Daycare: For more than 13 years, Lewis has run her Altadena-based day care for children from infancy through age 12, many of whom are enrolled in Pasadena Unified elementary schools.

    The district serves about 15,000 students, the majority Black and Latino, with more than 70 percent socioeconomically disadvantaged. During the Eaton Fire, five schools were destroyed or severely damaged, including Eliot Arts Magnet, Edison Elementary, Loma Alta Elementary, Noyes Elementary and Franklin Elementary.

    Alana Lewis, a Black woman, is holding a toddler and surrounded by kids of varying ages on a field trip with children from her Altadena-based daycare.

    Lewis on a field trip with children from her Altadena-based day care.

    Lewis said most of the children she cares for are Black and Latino, come from low-income families, and were directly affected by the fire, including three who lost their homes.

    She added that some of the children had attended elementary schools destroyed by the fire and were displaced to other schools in Pasadena. That grief only deepened when they returned to their beloved day care and saw what had been lost.

    “When the kids came back and saw that the things they played with were gone, you could see the look in their eyes—the disbelief,” Lewis said. “This will be with them forever.”

    In the photo on the left, five young children are gathered around a table with two gingerbread houses decorated with candy. On the right, a small boy is inside a structure made of giant Magnatiles.

    Some of Lewis’s charges work on a group project in her indoor play area.

    McGrath said Altadena’s diverse history makes the loss of child-care providers especially profound.

    “Over the years, families in Altadena have built strength and, across generations, a deep history in the community,” McGrath said. “A history of moving toward justice—a history of being a community that recognizes everyone’s desire to succeed and everyone’s right to earn a living wage.”

    She said child-care providers are deeply woven into that history, often serving multiple generations of the same families and anchoring stability for working parents. That stability, McGrath added, is critical for college students—particularly student parents, who rely on child care to stay enrolled.

    “To lose your day-care provider when you’re in those very vulnerable, sensitive stages of life is really destabilizing,” McGrath said. “That was a powerful loss—not just to families, but to long-held homes and to generational wealth that was deeply affected and destroyed.”

    Lewis agreed, adding that child-care providers are often overlooked in conversations about disaster recovery and economic stability.

    “As child-care providers, the role we play in the economy is extremely important,” Lewis said. “We help people go to work. We help mothers and fathers who are still in school. We have parents and grandparents who need their children cared for in a safe, quality learning environment.”

    Lewis said her experience after the fire underscored just how essential—and vulnerable—the child-care sector is during times of crisis.

    “We’re providing care to children who will run our economy someday,” Lewis said. “If we can come to the table and find a better solution, that would be awesome.”

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  • We’ve been here before: what seatbelts tell us about duty of care in higher education

    We’ve been here before: what seatbelts tell us about duty of care in higher education

    This blog was kindly authored by Dr Robert Abrahart, Lead Camapigner at ForThe100.

    There was a time – as recently as the late 1970s and early 1980s – when seatbelt laws were among the most contested public safety measures Parliament had considered. The opposition was not marginal or ill-informed; it was a principled, vocal defence of personal autonomy. Critics argued that compulsory seatbelts would infantilise adults, erode individual responsibility, and mark an unacceptable expansion of state power into private decision-making. They warned that safety would become a matter of compliance rather than judgment. Some even claimed seatbelts would actively increase the risk of death by trapping passengers in burning or submerged vehicles.

    These were not trivial objections. They were arguments about life, death, and unintended harm, made sincerely and taken seriously at the time. Yet, what ultimately changed matters was not public persuasion but legal expectation. Parliament did more than express a preference for safety; it made safety the default condition rather than a matter of individual discretion. The law did not eliminate judgment; it clarified where responsibility lay and what reasonable behaviour required. Today, compulsory seatbelts are a normal condition of everyday life, barely noticed as a restriction.

    The significance of this history lies in the pattern it reveals: where serious harm persists and safety depends on optional guidance rather than enforceable duty, law is the mechanism that resets expectations and enables culture to change in practice rather than aspiration. Higher education now occupies the same space seatbelts once did: persistent harm, diffuse responsibility, and reliance on voluntary frameworks that have failed to deliver structural change. This matters in 2026 as Parliament once again prepares to debate whether higher education providers should owe a statutory duty of care toward their students.

    Law as the driver of culture change

    In student safety debates, we are repeatedly told that universities need ‘culture change’, not law. A statutory duty, opponents argue, would be heavy-handed or liable to produce unintended consequences. But this misunderstands how culture change actually happens in complex institutions. Seatbelts did not become routine through voluntary pledges or best-practice frameworks. They became routine because the law reset the baseline of what responsible behaviour looked like.

    The same dynamic applies to health and safety law, safeguarding duties, and duties of candour. These laws do not micromanage behaviour; they set a ‘floor’ of responsibility below which organisations should not fall. In higher education, the proliferation of policies and reporting requirements has equipped institutions to act, but it has not resolved the fundamental question of who is responsible when foreseeable harm occurs. A statutory duty of care would not replace existing regulation; it would give it legal clarity and purpose. It would not require universities to prevent all harm, but to act reasonably and proportionately where serious risk is foreseeable.

    The persistent evidence of systemic failure

    Student suicide is the clearest and most consistently documented indicator of what happens when responsibility for foreseeable risk remains unclear. According to the Office for National Statistics, approximately 160 students die by suicide each year in England and Wales – a figure that has remained broadly stable despite sustained policy attention, sector-led initiatives, and widespread recognition of a growing student mental health crisis. This sits alongside rising rates of anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation, intensified by academic pressure, social isolation, and post-pandemic stress, particularly among first-year and international students.

    More detailed evidence paints a picture of persistent systemic failure. In a recent review – the largest of its kind to date – 73 higher education providers in England disclosed 107 suspected suicide deaths and 62 incidents of non-fatal self-harm during the 2023 / 2024 academic year.

    Coroners’ reports and death reviews provide further insight into why these tragedies persist. Coroners have repeatedly highlighted:

    • Delays or inadequacies in referrals: Academic and support staff failed to act on red flags, leading to delays in internal referrals to wellbeing teams. Where external clinical help was sought, students expressing suicidal ideation or serious distress were often not seen in time or were discharged back to the university without adequate follow-up or safety planning.
    • Systemic shortcomings: Criticisms include poor communication when students disengage, fragmented responsibilities between academic and wellbeing services, and inconsistent data recording.
    • Failed interventions: In multiple cases, coroners found that more proactive care might have prevented the death.

    These data show that despite frameworks and sector-led initiatives, the same issues recur year after year because discretionary approaches have not yielded structural change.

    Deconstructing the ‘unintended consequences’ argument

    Concerns about unintended consequences – that institutions would act more defensively or that relationships of trust would be undermined – are often raised in good faith. Critics argue that a statutory duty would encourage universities to prioritise legal protection over student welfare, leading staff to become reluctant to engage beyond basic signposting for fear of legal repercussions.

    The difficulty with this argument is that these are not speculative risks of reform; they are features of the current, voluntary system. In the absence of a clear statutory duty, universities already operate through dense layers of policy designed first to demonstrate legal compliance and only secondarily to secure student welfare.

    Moreover, the current environment already produces the very outcomes critics fear:

    • Defensive Reliance on Process: Decision-making is routinely mediated through risk assessments and documentation intended to manage liability rather than responsibility.
    • Fragmentation of Responsibility: Currently, responsibility is siloed: the NHS manages clinical risk while the university manages administrative policy. Because no overarching authority exists to oversee how these organisations interact, their actions can sometimes become misaligned. One may be attempting to treat the student while the other inadvertently exacerbates the crisis through rigid academic processes. This creates a dangerous vacuum: the harm is foreseeable, but because it spans both systems, no one is legally responsible for the student’s total safety.
    • Procedural Rigidity: For students, this can manifest as delay where urgency is required, or in the prioritisation of inflexible administrative processes where humane judgment would make the difference.
    • Retrospective Responses: Institutional responses are often focused on post-hoc explanation and reputational management rather than timely intervention.

    Likewise, many specific examples cited – such as the inappropriate use of fitness-to-study processes as risk-management tools or intrusive searches of student accommodation – are already visible in practice. These are not behaviours introduced by legal duty; they are the result of uncertainty about responsibility, managed through internal policy rather than external accountability. This is not the side-effect of law; it is the product of its absence.

    The high cost of inaction

    Doing nothing is not a neutral choice. It is an active choice to preserve existing structures and behaviours known to produce harm. The underlying assumption has been that institutions are best protected by minimising formal duties. In practice, this has not removed risk; it has merely displaced responsibility.

    Inaction does not avoid unintended consequences; it locks them in. If the absence of a statutory duty has not prevented fragmentation of responsibility or reliance on policy and procedure in place of action, continuing without one will not resolve these systemic deficiencies. With 160 deaths a year and no sustained improvement, the system is not self-correcting.

    When critics warn that a statutory duty might make problems worse, they rarely explain how clearer legal responsibility would increase harm. What they are really proposing is that we accept known, ongoing harm because change carries uncertainty. But in public policy, uncertainty must be weighed against the certainty of continued harm. A statutory duty of care would not eliminate tragedy, but it would drive systemic reform by delivering the legal clarity required for both anticipatory action and effective real-time responses.

    Design, clarity, and the role of Parliament

    A statutory duty of care is not an all-encompassing solution. Its purpose is more modest: to remove ambiguity and set a common baseline of expectation. Properly designed, it would define who owes what to whom, in what circumstances, and with what degree of proportionality. It would make explicit the balance between care and autonomy that is currently left to informal judgment and uneven practice. Clarifying responsibility does not remove autonomy; it protects it by ensuring intervention is justified, proportionate, and accountable.

    Many ‘unintended consequences’ are, in reality, design questions. Concerns about over-intervention are not reasons to avoid legislation; they are reasons to draft it carefully. Parliament is exactly the forum where competing interests are weighed and safeguards are built in.

    Before seatbelt legislation, road deaths were unacceptably high and resistant to voluntary change. Parliament did not act because things were worsening, but because they were not improving. The lesson is that law often creates the conditions in which culture can change at all. With serious harms in higher education remaining stubbornly persistent, the real risk lies in continuing to tolerate ambiguity, diffuse responsibility, and weakened accountability – and mislabelling that as caution.

    On Tuesday, 13 January, MPs will hold a debate on the potential merits of a statutory duty of care for universities.

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  • 3 Pressing Themes Shaping Early Care and Education – The 74

    3 Pressing Themes Shaping Early Care and Education – The 74


    Join our zero2eight Substack community for more discussion about the latest news in early care and education. Sign up now.

    The early care and education field has experienced an eventful — sometimes tumultuous —  year, placing it repeatedly in the spotlight. While some states such as New Mexico forged bold solutions to child care’s rising unaffordability, others responded to federal budget pressures by cutting or freezing their child care programs, or walking back the very regulations meant to keep kids safe. When Head Start’s federal grant disbursements were slowed or frozen, the 60-year-old early education program for low-income families suffered a severe, existential threat. Meanwhile, as the sector continues to reel from the staffing shortages and high turnover rates that have haunted child care since the pandemic, heightened immigration enforcement activity is sending chills through the field’s workforce, which is nearly 20% foreign born. Through these challenges, some child care providers have found themselves becoming involved with advocacy efforts to bring about change, with some even running for office.

    Amid these developments — some amazing research and resources have emerged for the field. As the year comes to a close, zero2eight asked early care and education experts to share what they consider to be the sector’s must-read research of 2025. What emerged from their responses were a collection of reports, studies and data tools relevant to a number of urgent themes. These include the sector’s ability to respond to current events, new ways of thinking about preschool gains and economic analysis of some of the ongoing challenges facing the early care and education workforce. 

    Here are some of the themes, studies and resources identified by the field’s insiders as essential to moving the sector forward.

    1. Timely Research and Resources for Challenging Times

    Steeply rising costs, dwindling federal child care funds, and an aggressive federal immigration crackdown have all contributed to a challenging, fast-changing landscape for families and early educators, many of whom are immigrants and reliant on public benefits. The following new research and tools offer timely insights into how such pressures are reshaping families’ lives and the early care and education sector, with some offering inspiration for how to respond. 

    Working Paper: Recent Immigration Raids Increased Student Absences 

    Authors: Thomas S. Dee, economist and the Barnett Family Professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education

    Key Takeaway: Immigration raids coincided with a 22% increase in daily student absences, with especially large increases among the youngest students. 

    This study highlights the field’s “ability to innovate and be nimble to understand impacts of policy and policy enforcement,” said nominator Cristi Carman, director of the RAPID Survey Project at Stanford Center on Early Childhood who studies family well-being. It examines the collateral damage of unexpected immigration raids in California’s Central Valley, documenting a clear pattern in children’s school attendance, said second nominator Philip Fisher, director of the Stanford Center on Early Childhood, adding that “ICE raids are associated with increased school absenteeism.” According to the working paper, young children are expected to be the most likely to miss school, with students in kindergarten through fifth grade estimated to be far more likely to miss school as a result of immigration raids than high school students. 

    Report: State Strategies for Sustained Investment in Kids: A Landscape of Dedicated Funding

    Authors: Children’s Funding Project staff, including Bruno Showers, state policy manager; Lisa Christensen Gee, director of tax policy; Olivia Allen, vice president of strategy and advocacy; Josh Weinstock, policy analyst (former); and Marina Mendoza, senior manager of early childhood impact

    Key Takeaway: Facing dwindling federal funds, several states have innovated ways to provide dedicated funding for early care and education and youth programs.

    With pandemic-era relief funds running out, states are in desperate need of models for how to continue supporting early care and education, said Erica Phillips, executive director of the National Association for Family Child Care (NAFCC), who nominated this recent report. The report — from Children’s Funding Project, a nonprofit that helps secure sustainable public funding for children’s services — offers exactly that by providing a crucial, “very comprehensive overview” of how some states are building long-term, dedicated revenue streams for child care, early education and youth programs as federal money runs dry. As the report’s authors explain, stable, dedicated funding is critical to thriving programs, letting states and providers to “budget more than one year at a time, allowing them to make longer-term investments in quality improvement, facilities, staff education, and other key elements of evidence-based programs and services.” 

    Data Tools: Mapping Diaper Need in the U.S. and The American Affordability Tracker

    Authors: The diaper need mapping tool was published as part of a research collaboration between the Urban Institute and the National Diaper Bank Network. The affordability tracker was published by the Urban Institute. 

    Key takeaway: Families are facing mounting economic insecurity 

    The Urban Institute recently released two innovative data tools for policymakers, advocates and researchers that illuminate the increasing economic precariousness facing too many families, said Carman of the RAPID Survey Project. The interactive tool Mapping Diaper Need in the U.S., produced in partnership with the National Diaper Bank Initiative, shows how many diapers each county across the nation needs to address diaper shortages facing homes with young children that are below 300% of the federal poverty level. The American Affordability Tracker illustrates the rising cost pressures facing families across various indicators, including how the price of groceries has changed in counties and congressional districts in recent years. “Being able to see and understand scale and drivers of economic insecurity nationally is very powerful,” wrote Carman. 

    2. New Research Reveals Preschool’s Overlooked Impacts

    The body of early education research about how preschool affects children often measures child outcomes such as kindergarten readiness, standardized test scores or later graduation rates. While those are all important, Christina Weiland, professor at the Marsal School of Education at the University of Michigan and the Ford School of Public Policy, wrote in an email, “we’ve long suspected they aren’t the full picture of preschool’s effects.” Weiland nominated the following working paper as part of what she considers to be a new wave of research that explores a broader set of outcomes than the field has typically examined, such as parent earnings, accelerated coursework and subsequent schooling environments. “Together, these studies suggest benefits of preschool programs that have been largely overlooked,” but that are key to fully understanding the potential benefits of early learning investments for children and families, noted Weiland.

    Working Paper: Parents’ Earnings and the Returns to Universal Pre-Kindergarten

    Authors: John Eric Humphries, faculty research fellow at Yale University’s Department of Economics; Christopher Neilson, research associate at Yale University; Xiaoyang Ye, Brown University; and Seth D. Zimmerman, research associate at Yale School of Management 

    Key Takeaway: New Haven’s universal pre-K (UPK) program raised parents’ earnings by nearly 22% during pre-kindergarten, with gains persisting for at least six years.

    Weiland said that this notable study, published in 2024 and updated in 2025, expands the preschool picture by looking at how UPK might impact parents’ earnings,” and uses that to estimate the program’s returns on investment. It found that New Haven’s UPK program raised parents’ earnings by nearly 22% during pre-kindergarten, with gains persisting for at least six years, concluding that the returns to UPK investment are “high.” As one of the first studies looking at “earnings data in modern-day pre-K studies,” noted Weiland, it offers more evidence that the field is “likely underestimating the return on investment early education programs have.” 

    3. Spotlight on the Early Child Care Workforce

    Back in the spring, child care economist Chris Herbst spoke with zero2eight about how the COVID pandemic demonstrated how the child care workforce is “like a leaf blowing in the wind” — “sensitive to all kinds of changes in the policy and economic environment because it is is inextricably linked to the larger labor market.” Because of this, a new surge of recent research by economists has focused on the workforce, with researchers seeking to understand how early care providers respond to policy and market changes. Nominators pointed toward two such studies. 

    Working Paper: The Effect of the Minimum Wage on Childcare Establishments

    Authors: Katharine C. Sadowski, assistant professor at Stanford’s Graduate School of Education

    Key Takeaway: An increase in minimum wage changes who provides child care

    Combining “rich data with sensible research designs,” this study examines how an increase in the minimum wage could impact child care quality and access, noted nominator Aaron Sojourner, senior economist at W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. 

    Author Katharine C. Sadowski’s findings suggest that an increase to the minimum wage doesn’t lead to a decrease in the number of child care programs or the number of people working in the sector. However, minimum wage policies can influence who provides child care: larger enterprises, such as child care centers, are more likely to open and remain in operation, while smaller, self-employed providers, such as home-based child care programs, are less likely to open or remain in business. Among the smaller establishments that do stay open, the owners are less likely to have advanced degrees, the study found, potentially impacting the quality of child care provided, according to the author. “Unfortunately, minimum wage policy is binding and too important for a lot of child care employers and employees due to chronic underinvestment in the sector,” wrote Sojourner, adding that this is the first paper he’s seen to leverage “restricted-use data available through the U.S. Census Research Data Center system to generate insights on the sector.”

    Study: The Declining Relative Quality of the Child Care Workforce

    Authors: Chris M. Herbst, foundation professor in Arizona State University’s School of Public Affairs 

    Key Takeaway: The education of the early education workforce has dropped over time, possibly due to the sector’s low wages 

    This study found that the education levels and cognitive test scores of the early education workforce have been declining over time, suggesting lower teacher quality, which could have implications for children’s development. The study links this dip in teacher skills to the proliferation of early education programs which might divert future child care workers away from four-year colleges. It also looks at how low wages — which have remained low even as wages for other jobs for similarly-skilled workers have increased — might lead highly qualified individuals to choose other occupations. 

    “This is analogous to what previous research has found in the K-12 workforce,” wrote Jessica Brown, assistant professor of economics at University of South Carolina, who nominated the study. It “underscores the importance of the discussion of compensation in early childhood education.” Brown notes that it’s a difficult topic for the field to discuss, because “no one wants to imply that the current workforce is not high quality. But the reality is that compensation challenges mean that child care is not a very attractive job, and that has implications for the quality of the workforce.”


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  • Food Insecurity Is Surging Among Child Care Providers – The 74

    Food Insecurity Is Surging Among Child Care Providers – The 74


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    Hunger is on the rise for the early care and education workforce, according to recent research from the Stanford Center on Early Childhood, and signs suggest the challenge is unlikely to improve in the short term. 

    In June, 58% of early care and education providers surveyed by the RAPID Survey Project at Stanford said they were experiencing hunger, which researchers measured using six questions about food insecurity developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. These providers, who span a variety of roles and settings, are not just dealing with sticker shock at the grocery store; they are skipping meals, eating smaller portions to stretch food supplies further, and going hungry because they’ve run out of money to purchase food.

    The RAPID Survey Project measured hunger using six food security criteria developed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture:

    1. The food that we bought just didn’t last, and we didn’t have money to get more.
    2. We couldn’t afford to eat balanced meals.
    3. Did you or other adults in your household ever cut the size of your meal or skip meals because there wasn’t enough money for food?
    4. If yes, how often did this happen?
    5. Did you ever eat less than you felt you should because there wasn’t enough money for food?
    6. Were you ever hungry but didn’t eat because there wasn’t enough money for food?

    RAPID has charted provider food insecurity for the past four years. Rates of hunger held steady between 20% and 30% from summer 2021 until early 2024, then began rising precipitously. 

    Phil Fisher, director of the Stanford Center on Early Childhood, said the status quo rates of provider hunger were “unacceptable to begin with,” but that this recent spike is both “alarming” and “concerning.” 

    “The early care and education workforce is incredibly vulnerable to economic trends,” Fisher said, explaining the rise. “Part of it is just how close to abject poverty many [educators] are.”

    Indeed, early educators earn a median wage of $13.07 per hour, making it one of the lowest-paid professions in the United States. An estimated 43% of the workforce relies on public benefits, such as Medicaid and food stamps, to get by. 

    So when prices go up, early educators are among the first to feel the effects, and lately, food prices have done nothing but climb. The cost of groceries has increased almost 30% since February 2020. 

    “Food is very expensive,” said Isabel Blair, a home-based child care provider of almost 20 years who recently decided to close her program in Michigan. “It’s hard for families earning minimum wage to cover their basic needs — housing, child care and food.”

    Blair has noticed price inflation among eggs and produce, in particular. Both are staples in an early education program. 

    “You go to the grocery store, and the fresh vegetables are very expensive. For a tomato, you pay like three bucks. Or a dozen eggs, you play close to $4 now,” she said. “Feeding the children, you have to provide breakfast, a snack and lunch. Some programs offer dinner. Add those up, and it’s very costly.”

    In the RAPID survey, providers shared written responses to open-ended questions, and some highlighted how high grocery prices are affecting their own families. 

    “We’re skipping meals so the kids can eat,” a teacher in Colorado said. “Grocery prices are through the roof.” 

    “Grocery bills continue to rise and we are having to cut back on what we buy and redo our menu at home to be able to afford the same amount of food we were buying just months ago…” wrote a center director in Washington.

    “[My biggest concern right now is that] we don’t go hungry in the street someday,” a teacher at a center-based program in Georgia wrote. 

    A center director in Indiana said the “cost of groceries is going up and I can’t afford enough food … to last the entire month. We have to skimp on meals or bring leftovers from work home for the kids to eat.” 

    “Keeping food in the house and meeting our nutritional needs as a family [are my biggest concerns],” wrote a home-based provider in Ohio.

    Cristi Carman, director of the RAPID Survey Project, said the difficult choices providers must make, between buying more groceries or paying off a bill, is “really, really devastating.” Carman and Fisher separately noted that it becomes harder for caregivers to provide a nurturing, high-quality environment for kids when their stomachs are growling and they’re worried about how to put food on the tables for their own families before their next paycheck hits.

    “That’s not humane circumstances for individuals in any role, especially when they’re caring for the youngest children,” Carman said. “They’re not operating under the best set of circumstances. They’re operating at reduced need.”

    What’s more, Fisher said, is that early care and education providers often aren’t just buying groceries for themselves, but for the kids in their programs as well. (Rising costs have hit unlicensed family, friend and neighbor providers who care for millions of children from birth to age 5 in the U.S. especially hard, because while they are technically eligible, many remain excluded from the federal food program for child care providers.) So when providers are going hungry, it usually means the kids they’re serving are affected too. Maybe fresh fruits and vegetables are replaced with canned items, or proteins are replaced with carbs. Corner-cutting becomes unavoidable. 

    Despite the severity of food insecurity among providers, grocery prices are not expected to stabilize anytime soon, with the Trump administration’s tariffs forcing up the cost of imported foods. Meanwhile, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, which helps low-income households offset the cost of food, was disrupted during the government shutdown this fall, leaving many recipients without benefits for weeks. RAPID researchers have not yet finished analyzing survey data from that period, but Fisher acknowledged it may only show a worsening situation.

    “We’re not expecting these things to get better in the short term,” Fisher said. “If anything it will either reach a ceiling or continue to spiral.”


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